Martha Chiplis has an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She first printed on a Vandercook in 1984, and bought her own press in 1989. She worked for Sherwin Beach Press as a letterpress printer and designer for 16 years, and began teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. She is a freelance graphic designer, illustrator, letterpress printer, and coauthor of For the Love of Letterpress: a Printing Handbook for Instructors and Students, published by Bloomsbury LLC, now in its second edition.